Politics|Donald Trump Gets Personal in Attacks on Ted Cruz at Tea Party Convention

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Donald Trump Gets Personal in Attacks on Ted Cruz at Tea Party Convention

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Senator Ted Cruz of Texas during a Tea Party convention in Myrtle Beach, S.C., on Saturday. Donald J. Trump and Mr. Cruz sparred from afar earlier in the day, at campaign stops and on Twitter.CreditCreditScott Olson/Getty Images

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. — He told war stories about his old construction sites. He promised to build a beautiful “Trump Wall” along the border with Mexico. He poked some fun at Jeb Bush, saying that embracing his family name could do little to harm his low-polling campaign.

Mixing folksy stories that illustrated his business acumen and chest-thumping promises to bring America back, Donald J. Trump spent more than 40 minutes drawing laughs and charming the crowd at a Tea Party convention in South Carolina on Saturday.

But at the end, there was just one person who was really on his mind: Senator Ted Cruz.

“You give a campaign contribution to Ted Cruz, you get whatever the heck you want,” Mr. Trump said.

Boos poured in from large sections of the crowd, which included many people who wore red shirts bearing Mr. Cruz’s campaign logo and had come to hear the Texas senator speak.

“He didn’t report his bank loans,” he said over the jeers. “Say whatever you want. He’s got bank loans from Goldman Sachs, he’s got bank loans from Citibank, and then he acts like Robin Hood.”

The increasingly personal lines of attack against Mr. Cruz in a public setting mark a shift in the race for the Republican presidential nomination that started during Thursday’s debate and spilled onto the campaign trail on Saturday. Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the apparent nonaggression pact between the two leading candidates is a distant memory.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz sparred from afar earlier in the day, at campaign stops and on Twitter, with Mr. Cruz continuing to denounce the billionaire developer’s “New York values” and history of liberal policy positions. Mr. Trump, who has sometimes falsely claimed that he is a self-funding candidate, painted Mr. Cruz as beholden to wealthy campaign donors and as tethered to Wall Street. Mr. Cruz’s wife works for Goldman Sachs, and last week, he acknowledged receiving a Goldman Sachs loan for his 2012 Senate campaign that he had not properly disclosed.

Mr. Trump also did not relent on Mr. Cruz’s eligibility to be president. In an interview on the sidelines of the South Carolina Tea Party Coalition convention, Mr. Trump maintained that Mr. Cruz’s being born in Canada was a problem, and he noted that lawsuits questioning Mr. Cruz’s status as a “natural born citizen” are already being filed. Despite saying during last week’s debate that he would not file his own lawsuit, on Saturday Mr. Trump would not rule out the possibility.

“I’ll think about it,” Mr. Trump said. “It’s not something that I would want to do. It’s certainly something I would have standing to do. It’s not a priority. Because I’m beating him by so much, anyway, what do I have to bring a suit for?”

During his moment onstage, Mr. Cruz did not denounce Mr. Trump directly and did not mention his name. He offered himself as a trustworthy alternative to candidates who tell conservatives what they want to hear.

“How many people have been burned by politicians?” Mr. Cruz, who spoke less than two hours before Mr. Trump addressed the same group, said. “It happens over and over and over again.”

In a lawyerly fashion, Mr. Cruz laid out the argument that his actions validate his promises, presenting a list of trust “metrics,” such as battling the Affordable Care Act and refusing to give up on the fight against same-sex marriage.

He also made an effort to contrast with Mr. Trump stylistically. Last week, when a microphone failed at one of his rallies, Mr. Trump cursed the provider of the device and said that he should not be paid for his shoddy work. When Mr. Cruz’s microphone fell silent on Saturday, he calmly asked for a replacement and playfully tapped his fingers against it to determine if it was working.

Despite the recent infighting between the two candidates, supporters of Mr. Cruz and Mr. Trump did not seem to be persuaded by questions about Canadian roots or flip-flops on positions of the past.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A24 of the New York edition with the headline: At Tea Party Convention, Trump Gets Personal in Attacks on Cruz. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe